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Scholarly Communication

This guide describes services of Milner Library's scholarly communication program, and provides links to resources related to academic publishing, copyright, and open educational content.

Author Profile

Establishing your profile

As a scholar, your author record, enhances your research and optimizes the dissemination thereby demonstrating quantifiable and meaningful indicators of impact.  When your author profile is consistent, it enhances search retrieval and helps to disambiguate similar and/or same author names in databases.  Your name is thus unique, establishing your “presence” as an author.

There are many products that help set-up, track, and maintain your profile.  You'll find the major options in each tab.

Background

  • Author Record

From Web of Science: "An author record is a set of articles likely authored by the same person. Author records are generated by a proprietary algorithm that identifies and weighs shared data elements such as author names, institution names, and citing and cited author relationships. 

  • Claim Your Record

All the databases/products found in the tabs to the right of this box provide a way to claim your record. Reasons why claiming your record is necessary (from Web of Science):

Naming conventions:  "Different authors may be represented by the same name in the product database. For example, Richard J. Johnson and Robert J. Johnson may appear as Johnson RJ.  Conversely, the same author may be represented by different names, particularly if he or she has a long publication history. For example, Barbara Demmig-Adams is indexed as: Demmig-Adams, B; DemmigAdams, B; and/or Demmig-Adams, Barbara.

Author groups:  An author may be associated with multiple groups because:

  • The author may have changed institutions or locations
  • The author may be working in multiple research areas
  • The author may be citing a wide range of works in different articles published in different years"

First Step

Update/review your CV.  Self-check and claim your author record in all three databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.

Second step

Regardless of the databases/products you use, establish your ORCID account (your unique numeric identifier) and import your publications.  ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier (an ORCID iD) that you own and control, and that distinguishes you from every other researcher.

With thanks to Bernard Becker Medical Library Guides

ORCiD = Open Researcher and Contributor ID

Reasons why an ORCID iD is advantageous:

  • ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier (an ORCID iD) that you own and control, and that distinguishes you from every other researcher, especially those who have the same name(s).
  • You can connect your iD with your professional information — affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, and more.
  • You can use your iD to share your information with other systems, ensuring you get recognition for all your contributions, saving you time and hassle, and reducing the risk of errors.
  • Some publishers require ORCID iDs for authors before submitting a manuscript for peer review.
  • Some publishers require ORCID iDs of reviewers.
  • Some professional societies and organizations integrate ORCID iDs as part of membership and meeting workflows.  
  • Some databases embed ORCID iDs in author profiles.
  • Auto-populate a NIH Biosketch with information in your ORCID profile.

Web of Science (WoS) provides a profiling system in which you can track your publications, citation metrics, peer reviews, and journal editing work in one, easy to maintain profile. Creating a WoS account is required.

  • Import publications from Web of Science, ORCID, or your source manager (e.g. Zotero, EndNote)
  • Citation metrics from the the Web of Science platform
  • Your verified peer review and journal editing history, powered by partnerships with thousands of scholarly journals
  • Downloadable record summarizing your scholarly impact as an author, editor and peer reviewer

Don't discount WoS coverage in arts and humanities or the social sciences as these are also indexed.

Scopus "is the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature."

You do not need an institutional subscription to use Scopus.

 

Google Scholar also provides author profiles and accompanying citation data.

Citation Analysis: Measuring Your Impact

Each of the major vendors provide citation metrics.

Search within each to locate and then aggregate your metrics.  For greater accuracy/specificity, create an account within each, claim your record (claim your articles, weed out similar names etc.). You can then combine and weed out or de-dup: delete the duplicates.

Wiley Publishing Citation Metrics

To determine your citation metrics, follow the link and steps below.

  • Open Scopus Preview
  • Enter author name.  To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter Illinois State University in the affiliation field.
    • If more than one author profile appears, click on your profile (or whomever you are searching).
    • If using initials, enter periods after each initial
  • Once you click on the author's profile, a list of the publications will appear and to the right of each ctation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.
  • Click the number to view the articles that have cited your article

You can create your own account --which will help with accuracy and claiming your records.

Google Scholar

Provides citation counts for work found within the tool.  Depending on the discipline and cited article, it may find more cited references than Web of Science or Scopus because it is indexing more journals and more publication types than other databases.

Altmetrics

Altmetric tracks a range of sources to capture and collate this activity, helping you to monitor and report on the attention surrounding the work you care about.

An overview

ISU Research and Sponsored Programs